Stage Mother (DVD)
Jacqui Weaver is memorable as a mother who mourns the death of her son – a drag queen – in the terrific new film Stage Mother.
Maybelline (great name), married to very conservative Jeb (Hugh Thompson) who never quite accepted the fact that he had a gay son, goes to San Francisco to discover the life her son Rickey (Eldon Thiele) led. There she is met with scorn by her son’s lover Nathan (Adrian Grenier) who knew how Rickey never did quite get along with his parents. But she is also thrown aback to discover that her son owned a gay/drag bar, a bar that Nathan manages and which includes a bevvy of drag queens, among them the fabulous Dusty Muffin (Jackie Beat) and Tequila (Oscar Moreno).
Maybelline is lucky enough to be put up by her son’s friend and neighbour Sienna (a fierce and sexy Lucy Liu) with her adorable baby. It’s no real surprise and shock where the story takes us as the queens (including Mya Taylor – who was fantastic in Tangerine) warm up to Maybelline, who transforms their show (Maybelline is a choir director back in Texas) while at the same time transforming their lives. Will Maybelline sell and go back to her boring husband and life or will she add a bit of spice and magic to make the bar her own?
Weaver is wonderful as Maybelline – it’s a part that seems was tailor-made for her – it’s a perfect fit. At a bit over 90 minutes, there is a lot jam-packed into the film – smoothly directed by Thom Fitzgerald.
To say it’s a gay old time is an understatement. It’s instead a grand old time, and get ready for a very emotional ending.
Parasite (DVD)
Yes it’s true about all the hype surrounding the South Korean film ‘Parasite’ – it’s funny, dramatic, and very very different, and it sticks to you like, well, a parasite.
A Private War (DVD)
Rosamund Pike is perfect as war journalist Marie Colvin in the new film ‘A Private War.’
Glass (DVD)
Director M. Night Shyamalan had a huge hit with one of his first films ‘The Sixth Sense’, about a young boy who sees dead people. He’s now back a film with another supernatural theme called ‘Glass.’
Shyamalan has yet to repeat the success of ‘The Sixth Sense.’ He is very consistent in coming out with a film every two years or so, but the quality of his films seems to be getting worse and worse. ‘Glass’ is the third (and hopefully last) film in the fictitious Eastrail #177 train derailment series.
The series, which includes the 2000 film ‘Unbreakable’ and the 2016 film ‘Split, is where multiple characters have some sort of connection to the train disaster. But these characters are not normal people – they are superheroes with powers that they use for reasons that have never really been clear to me.
In ‘Glass’, which mostly takes place in a mental institution conveniently overlooking downtown Philadelphia, reunites Bruce Willis, James McAvoy and Samuel Jackson as the same characters from the previous films. Irrelevant of the plots of the first two films, ‘Glass’ is as silly and unbelievable as anything you would’ve seen at the cinema in years. All the characters wind up in the same mental institution, coincidentally, where there is not much staff on duty and the three of them seem to have free reign of the place.
A psychiatrist (a dismal Sarah Paulson) wants to convince all the men that they suffer from delusion (which is far far from the truth – can’t she see this?). Each of the men has, conveniently, one person who comes to visit them – all with some knowledge of their ‘illness.’ It all boils down to one messy showdown in the front parking lot of the institution and the view of the opening of a new downtown skyscraper which is talked about during the film quite a lot but doesn’t seem to have any connection at all to the characters. It’s all one big silly mess, and the people I saw it with (fellow film critics) shook their head as they walked out of the cinema. Avoid this one, please.
Girl (DVD)
McQueen (DVD)
Fashion designer Alexander McQueen was a genius He had an eye for fashion but was also a troubled soul. The new documentary ‘McQueen’ shows the highs, and the lows, of McQueen’s life.
The Happy Prince (DVD)
My Friend Dahmer (DVD)
Jeffrey Dahmer, the American who murdered 17 young men back in the 1980s and 1990s, was showing signs of strange behaviour at a young age, according to the new film My Friend Dahmer.
Based on the 2012 novel of the same name by cartoonist John Backderf, who had been friends with Dahmer in high school, the film shows how Dahmer came from a home where his parents constantly fought, and where he had an unnatural curiosity of the insides of animals. Dahmer, who grew up in Bath, Ohio, is brilliantly played by Ross Lynch, in a film that’s sharply edited and continually tense and spooky by the director, and writer, Marc Meyers. We see that Dahmer was awkward even to his own family, with a crazy and alcoholic mother (played by Anne Heche – in her best performance ever), and how Dahmer had a shed in the woods where he did certain experiments with animals.
Dahmer is eventually adopted by some of the cool kids in his class to perform certain acts that drew attention to himself, basically these acts were spasms set out to cause disruptions, but they also seemed to do something to Dahmer’s soul, for he became more and more intense and weird, turning some of his evil thoughts from animals to, eventually, humans. Dahmer even plotted to kill a local doctor whom he became attracted to, but it was not meant to be. But it’s in these early years that we see the beginnings of Dahmer’s sinister future – how he would end up becoming one of the world’s most cruel and crazy mass murderers.
Luckily for us, this film ends before the killings begin, but we know that this was the path that Dahmer’s life would take – the murder of many gay men in some of the most brutal and horrific ways.
Stronger (DVD)
The Florida Project (DVD)
It was always going to be for filmmaker Sean Baker to top 2015’s critically acclaimed film ‘Tangerine.’ But now he’s back with ‘The Florida Project,’ and it’s a winner!
‘Tangerine,’ which was shot on iPhones, told the story of two transvestite hookers surviving by any means possible in Hollywood. ‘The Florida Project,’ shot on 35mm, has a similar trajectory involving a single mother and her adorable 6-year old daughter surviving by any means and barely eking out a living in a rundown motel on the tacky fringes of DisneyWorld in Orlando, Florida. It’s an area filled with cheap motels (with tacky names such as Futureland Inn) and even cheaper and tackier gift shops and fast food restaurants (Orange World). And like in ‘Tangerine,’ Baker uses non-professional actors in this film.
Bria Vinaite is excellent as Hailey, a single young mother who struggles to find money to pay the weekly rent and to care for her very adorable six-year-old daughter Moonee (an excellent and natural Brooklynn Prince). Moonee has made friends with all of the little children at their motel complex (appropriately called The Magic Castle) in an area where Disney did not sprinkle magic dust on. The children spend their days getting up to no good, causing mayhem whereever they go, much to the annoyance of the motel manager Bobby (Willem Dafoe – in an award worthy performance). Hailey’s downstairs neighbor Ashley (Mela Murder) works at the nearby Waffle House and gives them free food, but after an incident that involves her son and Moonee, she forbids her son to hang out with Moonee, and severs her friendship with Hailey. One thing leads to another and slowly the magic seeps out of The Magic Castle.
‘The Florida Project’ is just fantastic. While it doesn’t quite come close to ‘Tangerine’ with it’s sarcastic and biting humor, it nonetheless is a cute and charming movie of childhood through a little girl’s eyes and the hard truths that reality will eventually rear it’s ugly head. And the cast are just superb. Baker, who co-wrote the script with Chris Bergoch, has another winner on his hands. ‘The Florida Project’ is the best film of 2017.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (DVD)
Dr. Steven Murphy, played by Colin Farrell, is a surgeon in a nameless U.S. city. He’s got, at least it seems, a picture perfect life. He’s married to the beautiful Anna (Nicole Kidman), who plays dead to satisfy his sexual desires, and two amazing children – teenage Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and younger son Bob (Sunny Suljic). But one day a young man by the name of Martin (played to perfection by Barry Keoghan) starts showing up at Steven’s hospital. Martin takes an interest in his work, but then starts showing up even when Steven isn’t there. One day Steven invites Martin over to his home for dinner, where Kim is immediately smitten with him and Bob wants to be his best friend. Barry is that easy to get along with, very friendly, wouldn’t hurt a fly, or so it seems. But Barry has other intentions, not good ones, that will grossly effect Steven’s family. It turns out that Barry’s father died on the operating table at the hands of Dr. Murphy, so he wants to get revenge. He does something to Kim and Bob to make them deathly sick (frustratingly it’s not clear exactly what he does to them), but Bob and Kim wind up in the same room at Steven’s hospital, and test after test after test doesn’t reveal the true cause of their illness. Dr. Murphy starts getting desperate and kidnaps Barry to try to get him to confess to what he did, but it might be too late as Steven’s perfect family and his good reputation as an excellent doctor could all come crashing down, not to mention he could potentially lose his children.
’The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ is all very dark and disturbing and moves at a snails pace along with the tension and drama, all to amazing dramatic effect. Directed by Yorges Lanthimos, who brought us the dark ’The Lobster,’ is able to keep the viewer on the edge of their seat as the tension keeps getting ramped up higher and higher. Farrell is at the top of his game here as the tormented father who can only stand back and watch his two children slowly get sicker and sicker. Kidman is good as the mother who is helpless, but Keoghan tops them both as a sinister kid with only one thing on his mind – revenge. ’The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ is a must see.
Breathe (DVD)
Actor Andy Serkis and his producing partner Jonathan Cavendish set up Imaginarium Productions to make their own films. They were looking for stories and realized that right under their noses was a remarkable and true story that was original and heartfelt. It was the story of Cavendish’s parents.
Norman (DVD)
Richard Gere is excellent as always as a man who is desperate to do a deal but can’t seem to get a break in the new film Norman.
Gere is Norman Oppenheimer, a New York hustler who appears to be living a life of lies – he doesn’t appear to have a place to live, he spends most of his time at a church that could possibly be a homeless shelter and talks about a daughter who may or may not exist. But he sees his fortunes possibly change upon a chance encounter with an up and coming politician. Then One day, after attending a conference, he sees Israeli politician Eshel (Lior Ashkenazi), Norman ingratiates himself with him by buying him an expensive pair of shoes, shoes that Norman probably can’t afford to pay for, but he does (though luckily for him Eshel refuses to get a suit as well). Three years later, as Norman still struggles to get one of his deals done, Eshel becomes the Israeli Prime Minister, so Norman realises that this could be his big chance to get into the big leagues. But what turns out to be a friendly relationship between Norman and the Prime Minister turns into nothing as Eshel sees Norman’s desperate attempts to be close to him a liability, which leaves Norman basically back to where he began – a fixer with nothing to fix.
Gere does a nice turn as the ageing New York Norman who never quite seemed to have been much of a success in life. He plays Norman with such believability, desperateness, and a bit of wit that it’s hard not to fall for him a bit. The film’s subtitle – The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer – pretty sums up this film – but it’s Gere, who was excellent as a homeless man in 2014’s Time Out of Mind – who shines and makes this film worth a watch. And he’s as handsome as ever.